External Review 1
University of Kentucky
University Studies Program
External Review
Submitted by the University External Review Committee
Alan D. DeSantis (Chair)
Communication
Jane Peters
Art
Tony Hardin
Theatre
Bill Rayens
Statistics
Jeff Osborn
Biology
Jane Wells
Accounting
October 2005
External Review 2
In early February of 2004, the External Review Committee met with Michael Nietzel,
then Provost of the University of Kentucky; Philip Kraemer, Associate Provost for
Undergraduate Education; Connie Ray, Vice President for Institutional Research,
Planning & Effectiveness; and Ernie Yanarella, Faculty Senate Chair to address the
group’s questions and to detail its goals. It was decided that the committee’s initial
charge would be six fold:
 Explore solutions to the weaknesses highlighted by the University’s Self-Study Report.
 Facilitate campus-wide discussions on USP reform.
 Investigate our benchmarks’ best undergraduate practices.
 Generate “bold and creative” alternatives to our present USP practices.
 Remain cognizant of the institution’s increasing enrollment and its decreasing budget.
 Develop a final report that is as complete and detailed as time and resources allow.
With the departure of Michael Nietzel and the creation of the Center for
Undergraduate Excellence, however, the committee’s charge was changed to
accommodate the institution’s new administrative and structural developments. In late
July of 2005, the committee’s modified assignment was to generate a series of guidelines
and/or ideas, in an attenuated document, that would serve as an intellectual springboard
for a newly formed Implementation Task Force.
With this new call, the committee saw an ideal opportunity to take the first, and
perhaps, most important step in significant reform by articulating what they believe the
University’s mission and responsibilities are to all undergraduates.
Towards this end, the committee generated five core-learning outcomes that are
essential in producing 1) an enlightened student body capable of responsibly participating
in their diverse and democratic culture, and 2) a progressive and forward thinking
university that will become our benchmarks’ standard of excellence.
The committee strongly recommends that these five core-learning outcomes serve as
the guiding principles in restructuring the University of Kentucky’s undergraduate
mission. It is the belief of this group that simply adding new courses or subtracting old
ones, without a firm commitment to such a foundation, will only produce an increasingly
External Review 3
disconnected, fragmented, and unsatisfying undergraduate experience for both students
and professors.
This idea of having the general studies curriculum grow from a collection of focused
guiding principles is not a new idea in the larger community of universities. Miami
University of Ohio, for example, developed their innovative and successful “Miami Plan”
in exactly this way. The specific guiding principles for Miami University, however, are
not necessarily the right ones for a public, rank-one research institution like ours. As the
state’s flagship institution, we must understand the particular talents of our faculty and
the needs of the Commonwealth we serve, and then weave these into both a colorful and
profound expression of undergraduate education for all of our students.
In the section that follows, we will briefly discuss each of our five core learning
outcomes and supply some examples of courses and/or programs that have been piloted
or adopted on campus to help clarify the intent of these goals. The committee underscores
the importance of realizing that these examples are not intended to be exhaustive or
simple panaceas to our current problems. Instead they are meant only to frame the larger
discussion and point to possible areas for future investigation. Finally, when applicable,
the committee will recommend courses and/or programs that have been used at our
benchmark institutions that have shown tentative promise in fulfilling our learning
outcomes. While the committee did not have sufficient time or resources to seriously
investigate the logistics of these ideas, we are optimistic about their potential and strongly
encourage the Implementation Task Force to explore their feasibility in more detail.
I.
The new core curriculum program should better enable all students to
understand their place and purpose in their ever-changing world.
Often students who enter our University’s front doors have not had the intellectual
freedom or the needed stimulation to understand the complexity of their own society, let
alone that of others around the world. A core curriculum, therefore, must empower
students to not only uncover the complexity of their own lives but to be curious and
knowledgeable about the multicultural world outside of our Commonwealth’s borders.
We must also ensure that our students are prepared, intellectually and ethically, to
External Review 4
develop their own informed worldview. Once equipped, they can answer the pressing
questions of “who are they,” “what are their rights and responsibilities as citizens of their
community, state, nation, and world,” and “how can they be both committed to an ethical
foundation and sensitive to multicultural differences.”
A. Specifically, the committee recommends that a new core-curriculum program enable
all students to accomplish the following:
 Understand the histories behind their own culture’s social practices.
 Learn about the myriad cultures, religions, languages, and customs in their world.
 Learn from multiple and competing perspectives.
 Develop and apply their own worldview.
B. Some examples of courses or programs at the University that have attempted to
address this learning outcome include the following:
 “Ways of Knowing,” “Journeys,” “Communities,” and “Ecology” courses of the
Modern Studies Program.
 “Ecology” and “Journeys” courses of the Expanding Horizons Program.
 Global Studies Program.
 The current USP cross-cultural requirement.
C. Suggested programs/courses that should be examined more closely to determine their
feasibility and effectiveness:
 The committee recommends that the university earnestly promote and expand its
current Study Abroad Program. Every undergraduate student should be strongly
encouraged to study for at least one semester outside the borders of the United
States, preferably in a non-English speaking country.
II.
The new core curriculum program should better enable all students to engage
in the process of inquiry and reflection.
External Review 5
The often cited Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates in the Research
University saw the unique opportunities that Research One Universities have to educate
their undergraduates:
WHAT IS NEEDED NOW IS A NEW MODEL OF UNDERGRADUATE
education at research universities that makes the baccalaureate experience an
inseparable part of an integrated whole. . . . There needs to be a symbiotic
relationship between all the participants in university learning that will
provide a new kind of undergraduate experience available only at research
institutions. Moreover, productive research faculties might find new
stimulation and new creativity in contact with bright, imaginative, and eager
baccalaureate students, and graduate students would benefit from integrating
their research and teaching experiences (pp. 7-8).
Inspired by Boyer’s ideas, we believe that the University of Kentucky has a unique
opportunity to form a symbiotic relationship between our research agendas and our
pedagogical commitment to our undergraduate students. While it may be largely the
responsibility of our majors to develop this relationship along methodological lines, it is
the responsibility of our core curriculum to capture and communicate those facets of
inquiry and reflection that motivate and sustain successful research agendas at a Rank
One Research Institution. It is in this sense that our core curriculum needs to encourage
faculty to bring their research into their classrooms where students can be inspired by
their quest for new knowledge, directed by their methodological rigor, and informed by
their findings and conclusions. By doing this, we will not only highlight what is special
about the undergraduate experience at the University of Kentucky, we will also foster the
spirit of curiosity in our students and supply them with the tools and methods they will
need to ask and answer the perplexing questions that await them in their post-college
lives.
A. Specifically, the committee recommends that a new core curriculum program enable
all students to accomplish the following:
External Review 6
 Generate new knowledge by applying research processes and methods.
 Create their own “moments of epiphany.”
 Become life-long learners.
B. Some examples of courses or programs at the University that have attempted to
address this learning outcome include the following:
 Freshman Discovery Course.
 Living/Learning Center.
C. Suggested programs/courses that should be examined more closely to determine their
feasibility and effectiveness:
 The committee encourages the university to explore the possibility of a Senior
Capstone course that would be major specific and would focus on inquiry-based
learning. This would also serve as an idea site for program assessment.
 The committee encourages the university to explore the possibility of a Senior
Discovery Seminar where any student, regardless of discipline or major, could
explore inquiry-based learning in any of the three major areas of knowledge, e.g.,
humanities, social sciences, natural sciences. Ideally, the topics explored in these
seminars would encourage civic engagement and be directed at improving the
human condition in the commonwealth.
 Both the Capstone Course and the Senior Seminar might also be effective
strategies for bridging the divide that now exists between students’ first two
academic years (when USP courses are disproportionately taken) and their later
years (when major courses are disproportionately taken).
III. The new core curriculum program should better enable all students to think
from multidisciplinary perspectives
The organizational structure of most traditional American universities forces both
professors and students into isolated and myopic departments. This Balkanization of
knowledge stifles transcendent and intellectually expansive thinking: Lines are drawn,
External Review 7
territories are guarded, and ideas are protected as the sole domain of one group. This
committee believes that for bold and creative reform to take place at the University of
Kentucky, knowledge must be liberated from the politics of “departmentalization.”
We must stop thinking about what specific “history,” “psychology,” “art,” and
“mathematics” courses we want students to take and begin thinking about what we want
our students to learn and how that knowledge can best be transmitted. Quite often, the
answer to both of these questions rests on the use of multidisciplinary education
strategies where big questions are asked and answered from a plurality of perspectives
and epistemologies. In accomplishing such a goal, we will ultimately make knowledge
vastly more complex, interdependent, and interesting for both students and teachers.
A. Specifically, the committee recommends that a new core curriculum program enable
all students to accomplish the following:
 Synthesize materials from multiple disciplines.
 Integrate ideas from various disciplines.
 Apply theories and methods across multiple disciplines.
B. Some examples of courses or programs at the University that have attempted to
address this learning outcome include the following:
 “Introduction to the Social Sciences” courses from the Social Science Honors
Program.
 “Space, Place, and Culture” option in the new Honors Program.
 “Ways of Knowing,” “Journeys,” “Communities,” and “Ecology” courses of the
Modern Studies Program.
 “Ecology” and “Journeys” courses of the Expanding Horizons Program.
 Global Studies Program.
C. Suggested programs/courses that should be examined more closely to determine their
feasibility and effectiveness:
 The committee encourages the university to explore multi-disciplinary ways of
teaching the traditional USP curriculum. Many of our broad-topic survey courses,
External Review 8
e.g., Introduction to Psychology, Communication, Economics, Art History, could
be transformed into classes infinitely more diverse and layered if taught by a well
coordinated, multi-disciplinary team of professors. Art historians, literary critics,
geographers, family-studies scholars, gender researchers, computer scientists, and
neurologists could all lend their unique perspective to the foundational question of
what it means to be human in the 21st Century.
IV. The new core curriculum program should better enable all students to meet the
new demands and challenges of life in the 21st Century.
In many regards, today’s university curriculum looks strikingly similar to that offered
a century ago. This is not to say that the study of classical and traditional knowledge has
become obsolete. It is instead to assert that political, economic, technological, and
cultural changes at the turn of the 21st Century have placed additional demands on our
university that we are obligated to meet. If we as a university are to prepare our students
to be functioning members of a democratic society, we must give serious consideration to
the new types of knowledge and skills they will need to succeed.
A. Specifically, the committee recommends that a new core curriculum program enable
all students to accomplish the following:
 Adapt to the discovery of new knowledge and technology.
 Evaluate and question changing ethical principles that are derived from new
knowledge and technology.
 Live as participatory citizens in a multilingual and multicultural world.
 Evaluate the qualities and merit of information.
 Access, process, produce, and deliver information.
B. Some examples of courses or programs at the University that have attempted to
address this learning outcome include the following:
External Review 9
 Internship programs that serve to enhance in-class lessons with real-world
experiences.
 Study Abroad Program that exposes students to the growing complexity of the world
outside the Commonwealth.
C. Suggested programs/courses that should be examined more closely to determine their
feasibility and effectiveness:

The committee sees an increasing need for the core curriculum to include a media
and visual literacy course. Older ways of “making sense of the world” are rapidly
becoming inadequate in the face of our society’s ever increasing dependence on
media and visual images.

All our core classes must more actively engage in ethical discussions that
continually adapt to our world’s rapidly changing technological, cultural,
corporate, medical, and communication practices.
V.
The new core curriculum program should better enable all students to discover
and examine the ambiguity of human knowledge
While we as a University want to help students develop their own stable foundation
for life, we also want them to be critical consumers of ideas and assertions. In a world
where science, theology, business, health, pop culture, and popular consensus regularly
make claims with absolute certainty, universities need to prepare and equip students with
the knowledge and skills needed to evaluate their merits.
This type of informed skepticism also needs to be encouraged in our classrooms. The
committee believes that all undergraduate classes need to not only teach the prevailing
paradigmatic “truths” of their discipline, but to train and encourage students to question
and evaluate these lessons. Our university should embrace the dictum that, “All ideas, no
matter how well entrenched or sacred, need to be questioned and evaluated.” Students,
once empowered with this ability, can then decide what ideas and practices in their lives
to reaffirm, reform, or reject.
External Review 10
A. Specifically, the committee recommends that a new core curriculum program enable
all students to accomplish the following:

Expose their assumptions to the rigors of investigation and independent thought.

Question the ideas presented to them in their classes.

Analyze, compare and evaluate different ways of knowing produced by different,
and at times, incongruent, knowledge claims.
B. Some examples of courses or programs at the University that have attempted to
address this learning outcome include the following:

The committee recognizes that many of our best teachers have already elegantly
incorporated “critical-thinking skills” into their classes. It is our hope, however,
that this skill will also serve as a guiding principle and significant criteria in
reshaping USP.
C. Suggested programs/courses that should be examined more closely to determine their
feasibility and effectiveness:

All our core courses must provide an atmosphere conducive to a free and open
exchange of thoughts and ideas.
Conclusion
This report is not intended to be the last word, but only one in an on-going dialogue
that addresses our obligation to our undergraduate students. Like others before us, we are
committed to the liberal-arts mission for all students who come to the University of
Kentucky. For this mission to be fully recognized, however, it must be built on a solid
foundation of learning outcomes. Without such a unifying base, our University Studies
Program will lack unity, purpose, and commonly shared goals. As one professor reported
in the self-study, “UK should not have a core that is a façade. . . 30 courses under X
rubric does not represent a core” (p. 26).
External Review 11
Building a core curriculum for our university, however, will not be an easy task. As
the same self-study highlighted, there will be significant barriers to reform, some of
which have derailed previous efforts at undergraduate reform. Some of the most daunting
hurtles that the Implementation Task Force will face in engendering change include the
following:

Increasing first-year enrollment.

Budgetary constraints and inconsistent funding.

Department and college territoriality over disciplinary knowledge and course
offerings.

College-specific structures that have hardwired TA lines to USP courses.

Campus and faculty inertia following from years of repetitive practices.

Professor and administrative anxiety over foundational changes and the unknown
of a new curriculum.

University culture that values research and graduate programs over undergraduate
education.
This is not to imply that change will not or cannot happen. This committee, in fact, is
extremely optimistic about the future of the University’s undergraduate core curriculum
given the current administration’s commitment to reform and the passion and dedication
of our faculty. To help facilitate this change, the committee recommends the following:

Campus-wide conversations that actively seek out ideas and opinions from all
faculty members.

Strong and influential implementation by a task force that can command attention
and respect from the campus at large.

Strong top-down leadership that can push the faculty out of its inertia and into
participatory change.

Reward system for faculty who commit time and energy towards undergraduate
reform.
External Review 12

Unambiguous and unconditional commitment to doing no harm to graduate
programs that depend on an intricate relationship with USP for funding.

Realistic and honest levels of funding. For meaningful and significant reform to
take place, funding is a necessity. “Doing more with less” is a pedagogical
anathema.
In reviewing our benchmarks’ best practices and our University’s past creative efforts
at undergraduate reform, it has become clear to this committee that with bold leadership,
an informed and enthusiastic faculty, and reasonable funding, the University of Kentucky
is not far from becoming an American public university that our benchmarks recognize
and emulate.